


Recollect the Snow

by zopponde



Series: Remembered If Outlived [2]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Episode: s14e22 The "Mission", Epistolary, F/F, Fucked Up, Gen, RvB Angst War, Season/Series 14, Survival, Wakes & Funerals, Weddings, charon industries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-04-07 00:22:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14068842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zopponde/pseuds/zopponde
Summary: Sherry doesn't go looking for Freelancers, but she sure gets them. The only mystery is how they're going to survive.





	Recollect the Snow

**Author's Note:**

> RVB Angst War regulation warnings: Character death, Violence, Blood, Gore, Suicide, Self-harm, Slurs. If you care more about warnings than spoilers, a more detailed description is on my Tumblr:  
> http://seerofbread.tumblr.com/post/172178361050/remembered-if-outlived-red-vs-blue
> 
> This is intended to be able to stand alone or function in a diptych with the other work (The Letting Go) in the Remembered If Outlived "series." Either one can be read first.

[Entry: December 10, 2550]

_ Sherry lays in medbay, out of armor, leg bandaged and elevated. Her hair is rapidly escaping a helmet-friendly bun, but she hasn’t yet undone it. Her face is flushed, eyebrows knit in anger and eyes flooded with pain. _

Some fucking assholes finally showed up yesterday. Said they’re with Project Freelancer and fucking  _ shot  _ me and Darryl. Same fucking leg, Terrill’s going to be laughing his ass off at us for fucking  _ ever _ . Nobody fucking  _ cared  _ when they packed our medkit so the only painkillers we have are fucking over-the-counter. Guess what? My leg still fucking hurts! I am going to  _ kill  _ that bitch--what the fuck was her name? Something dumb.  _ Ohio? _

Worst part is, for half a second I thought I might get laid. Guess I did! Got laid up in  _ bed! Fuck! _

* * *

[Entry: January 25, 2551]

_ Sherry sits in her office wearing a bathrobe. Her hair is loose around her shoulders. She sighs. _

The bad news is, I can’t keep my promises. Ohio’s still alive, and all her other weird state friends too.

I guess it’s good because, you know, we weren’t exactly ordered to kill these guys. We weren’t ordered anything... so I guess the real mission was just to stay alive and not fucking lose our minds. That’s all that’s left, right? Hierarchy of needs or whatever, we don’t have anything to give ourselves meaning but we can still, I dunno, make ourselves survive, or something.

... The good news is I got laid.

The bad news is she didn’t tell me her real fucking name.

* * *

[Entry: January 29, 2551]

_ Sherry is in medbay again. The camera shakes as she stares at it from an unflattering angle and speaks between painful-sounding coughs, her voice tight and quiet. _

Ughh... we’ve all come down with shit. Set up a quarantine. Dunno how the Freelancers are doing...

... One of the Freelancers has a sniffle. Fuck him. But especially fuck the others. My face is going to explode. It’s already leaking...

_ She coughs, enters a fit, and the entry ends. _

* * *

[Entry: January 31, 2551]

_ Sherry stares in the camera, lips tight. Her voice cracks and when it comes through it’s a rasp. _

How the fuck are we supposed to find proper dirt to bury him in?

...Terrill’s taking it hard.

* * *

[Camera Feed: February 7, 2551]

Sherry sees one figure in gray armor and three in blue, each tagged in the HUD with a name. They stand outside in the snow, surrounding a body-sized hole. There are a couple vats of water.

“Charon Industries protocol says we have to give them the armor back,” the gray figure says, tagged as Terrill. He sounds tired, but not emotionless. “Of course, they’re still not answering our calls, so I guess all we can do is bury it with the dead. May some pencil-pushing asshole feel inconvenienced by the loss of an asset. With every breath taken on this frozen hellscape, Darryl always hated Charon, so we may have some peace in knowing that, with the freezing of this hundred-thousand-dollar helmet and subsequent disabling of the million-dollar suit, Darryl has given Charon a final inconvenience and passed on to enter the Great Fuck You. Let us always remember him every time we say, Fuck Charon Industries.”

Four voices answer, one from behind the camera: “Fuck Charon Industries.”

A silence follows.

The blue figure tagged Idaho says, “We should probably do this ice burial thing before these vats freeze over.” An awkward pause. “Last call for final goodbyes, I guess.”

Terrill turns away, sets a hand on one of the vats. Sherry approaches the hole, looks down maybe three feet to see a man in a Charon-branded dress uniform. His arms are crossed across his chest, ammo cans laid below his feet, his helmet removed and placed next to his head, a half-empty bottle of flavored vodka by his side. His eyes are closed. Several flakes of snow have already fallen across his face, and they haven’t melted.

Somewhere behind the camera, someone mumbles. “... biomonitors?” Idaho asks. “Then we should keep a watch until the next supply drop. We’ll work on an ambush in case...”

“Yeah,” Terrill says flatly. He doesn’t sound convinced.

“And if they aren’t watching,” Ohio adds, “maybe we’ll just be able to get by a bit more comfortably on food.”

Sherry shakes her head, left to right. Her hand comes in from behind the camera and drops an empty package of shelf-stable pastry, landing it over the corpse’s hands.

From behind the camera, a raspy voice: “Keep snacking wherever you are. Sorry I couldn’t give you a full one.” The camera twitches, then rattles, then shakes. Sherry is suspiciously silent, and then she stifles one gasp and exhales shakily.

The file ends as the camera swings around in a blur.

* * *

[Entry: February 11, 2551]

_ Sherry stares at the camera in her office, her jaw a hard line, her eyes flaming, her lips tight. Her voice is still hoarse. _

Package dropped today. Orbital drop as usual. Two thirds as much as usual. Fuckers read the biomonitor and they don’t fucking care.

_ She draws a hand over her face. Her shoulders stay up, but her head tilts, and her hand doesn’t quite conceal her lips moving or keep the microphone from catching her breath. _

... going to die here.

_ When she pulls her hand away, Sherry has the same hard jaw, changed only by a slight frown. _

Vera doesn’t have to know that. We still have a surplus to work through. We’ll live.

* * *

[Entry: June 9, 2551]

_ There’s a brightness to Sherry’s eyes, despite the sharpness of her face. She manages to sound cheerful as she croaks. _

Freelancers have been here for six months now. We’ve had some lows, and I guess my voice is never going to recover from that cold, but... at least there’s something to do, huh?

Mike’s been saying that we could just fucking leave, and we’re finally desperate enough to consider it. Nobody here was exactly an engineer so I don’t think it’ll work, but we don’t have anything to lose. Terrill says he wants to live on an island, Vera says she wants to open some nerdy bookstore. I’m not sure what I’ll do. Probably fake my death, make a new identity, and throw  _ every  _ Charon asset I’ve ever seen into a volcano. Start travelling the galaxy, maybe--go somewhere else, just because I can. Maybe find a new place to live eventually, since I burned so many bridges back home.

We’re starting with a communications array. If we can pirate a signal, we can probably actually learn how to build a ship. Hell, maybe we can get a whole ship in an orbital drop.

But  _ that’s  _ only feasible if we can get Charon to pay for it.

* * *

[Entry: August 12, 2551]

_ Sherry wears her armor in her office, only the helmet missing, snow and ice melting off of her chestplate. Her hair is suddenly much shorter, unevenly chopped along the sides and clumsily cut out of her eyes. She sighs. _

Winter’s having one last cold snap. Or whatever passes for winter here. You never think it can get colder until it does.

Mike wandered off for some fucking reason, got caught in a storm. We finally found him but his suit malfunctioned or got punctured or something. Vera and Ezra are on it, and we’ve got Terrill looking up frostbite symptoms so he stops offering people alcohol.

... Definitely hypothermia, which sucks.

* * *

[Entry: August 14, 2551]

_ Sherry paces and fidgets in her fatigues. _

What the fuck are we supposed to do with a guy with no feet? There aren’t any wheelchairs, no ramps, nothing. Mike’s gonna have to get carried everywhere until we can get off the planet-- _ if _ we can get off the planet! We’ve barely made any progress and it hasn’t been  _ many  _ months but it has, in fact, been months. We can’t keep eating like this, and now we’re gonna have to keep feeding Mike and he’s not even going to be useful--

_ Sherry cringes on one foot, nearly falls over, face twisted in pain. She limps back to her chair, shaking her head and pulling her sock up to rub at scarred flesh. _

... None of us would be here if we were fucking  _ useful _ . But we can’t afford to  _ not  _ be, if we want to get out.

This is bullshit.  _ Bullshit! _ Fuck Charon Industries!  _ Fuck-- _

_ The file ends. _

* * *

[Entry: September 30, 2551]

So, Ezra got some fucking seeds dropped from orbit. Don’t know what he plans to  _ do  _ with them. We finally wound up getting to dirt--Terrill figured out a way to get some of the metals out of it, and it’s damn slow, but if we can make even  _ one  _ of the parts we’re missing, we can probably save a lot of money. Ezra didn’t get fertilizer, the dumbass, so all the jury-rigged sun lamps probably won’t do shit. Unless he’s been collecting his own? Gross.

Can’t blame him for trying, though. Let’s see, what else...

Ship progress is  _ kind of  _ on hold, for now. We managed to make an engine thing, but I’m not convinced it’ll be able to lift all five of us, let alone the actual metal. We’ve started discussing sending one of us up and getting help from there. Mike’s the lightest, now, but he’s also not the first person I’d trust with my life on something like this. Probably can’t go because of how these fucking suits freak out if you don’t have a limb. Poor kid can’t even cross the bridge now, winter’s come on too strong to go out without mag boots. Terrill says we should jury-rig a prosthetic, but Vera doesn’t think it’d be a very good fix because of chafing and stuff, and Ezra isn’t convinced the suit will register it. I figure it’d be worth a shot, if we weren’t already recycling every scrap we can find. Maybe if we can stuff the legs with wrappers...

I want us all to get out at the same time, though. None of us deserves to leave more than the others. And the thought of leaving someone behind, or getting separated... that’s not great either.

Last shipment from Charon came with a bunch of extra ammo for some reason. It’s our anniversary, I think. They’re probably trying to tell us to off ourselves already. We’ll have to think of something  _ else  _ to do with it.

* * *

[Helmet Feed: December 9, 2551]

Sherry’s helmet camera shows Ezra and Vera doubled over with laughter, and Mike grinning as he leans back on the crate he’s sitting on, next to a couple of liquor bottles of varying capacities. It must be warm because the Freelancers aren’t wearing helmets. Ezra’s face is showing the early onset of laugh lines and Vera’s hair bounces freely as her head shakes with laughter. A gunshot fires and Terrill is yelling, “A blender!”

“Four!” Ezra says, and Sherry watches Terrill fire again into the air.

“A waffle iron!”

“Five!” Vera calls, and Terrill throws something into the air, and four guns simultaneously shoot at it. None of them hit, and the glass bottle doesn’t shatter until it hits the bridge.

“Fuck, we really are useless,” Sherry laughs.

“Maybe we should think of a five things that isn’t what we’re... missing out on,” Vera says, and Ezra groans with a smile on his face.

But Mike laughs as Terrill walks back to join everyone. “I get it!”

“Five things that make for better five things games than this,” Sherry says dryly.

Ezra reaches for the shotgun out of Terrill’s hands. “Oh, I got this. I practically invented five things.”

“Bet he learned it on a playground,” Vera mumbles into Sherry’s ear as soon as Ezra is out of earshot.

“Well, start it and we’ll count it,” Terrill calls.

Ezra aims to the sky and yells, “Five moms I’d rather be doing!”

Terrill laughs. “One!”

Ezra fires the shotgun. “Five kinds of bugs to shoot on sight!”

“Two!” Mike calls, and Sherry hears the blast, momentarily distracted by Vera, who has quickly pressed her lips to a surface near the camera.

“Five celebrities whose names sound evil...” The clatter of a dropped gun.

“Three--” Vera has a smile for the consonant but the vowel is a gasp. Her eyes pop wide open and she covers her mouth with a hand, recoiling.

Sherry turns to follow Vera’s gaze. Ezra is on the ground, leaning uncomfortably, his limbs slack as if someone armored a ragdoll, and his head is lolled back into a red pool.

Vera and Terrill are already running. Mike screams. The camera shakes and the file ends.

* * *

 

[Entry: December 13, 2551]

Apparently, he wanted a burial at sea, something about a cycle of life and death or some shit. Vera and Mike knew that. Fucking morbid-ass military types. Best we could do was bury him in the garden, and guess the fuck what? We found Mike’s fucking  _ legs  _ in there. Pretty fucked up, huh? Mike  _ says  _ it was his idea, but I think he’s lying. Vera thinks it’s fine because Mike  _ doesn’t mind _ , but it’s still...

It’s fucked up. Who fucking knew Ezra was a fucking psycho? 

* * *

 

[Entry: May 29, 2552]

_ Sherry pulls the camera close to her face in her bunk, getting a closer look at her cheek, visibly more plump now. The audio rumbles as the microphone bumps into her chin and catches her thoughtful sighs, and Sherry’s eyes try to follow the attached screen. A finger points to a black spot, feeling the along a clean edge and a blurry protrusion. Sherry moves her lips to one side and then the other, seeing how the spot reacts to the stretch of skin, and mumbles to herself intermittently. _

... is this... I don’t know... I should probably... it might be fine, right? ... I could wait... ugh, it seems... this isn’t right...

_ Her eyes focus on the camera thoughtfully. _

The ship...

_ Sherry sighs and sets the camera down. It points to the ceiling for three minutes, and then Sherry is back with rubbing alcohol and a sharp knife. _

* * *

[Entry: July 8, 2552]

_ Sherry has a fresh scar on her face where the spot was. She swivels absent-mindedly in her office chair. _

Ship’s coming along, actually. Stocks went up for our fake dealer, so we got another orbital delivery. Costs a  _ fuck-ton _ , but we got a bunch of tools for welding and riveting and shit. It’ll take us a while to get any other parts, but Terrill’s metal mill is really helping out.

Mike’s been pretty upbeat, for a guy with no legs and two dead friends. I guess I expected him to be more of a burden when he lost his feet, but... the kid’s got upper body strength, I guess, crawls real well and usually does the right thing on the ship when he’s the only one who can fit there. Really holds together the D&D campaign Sherry’s running, too.

Vera’s doing fine. As long as there’s something to do with the ship, she’s happy, and I’m pretty good at cheering her up on a smaller basis.

Terrill... Terrill’s hanging in there...

* * *

[Entry: October 12, 2552]

_ Sherry sits in her office in her pajamas with a steaming mug. _

Mike got bit by... something in his sleep. It’s fucking gross. His whole arm turned blue, and there’s frost by the bite mark. Vera says it looks like a black widow bite, so we’re chalking it up to an ice spider. Ironic, huh? And now he’s in the great fuck you, or whatever. Dead.  _ Gone forever. _ It’s fucking dumb how we couch it, sometimes, like we’ve separated so far from actual fucking civilization that  _ death  _ isn’t real. It’s gonna happen no matter  _ what  _ words we use, and even if it makes us sort of feel better... it doesn’t seem quite right for Mike. He didn’t really  _ get  _ pissed off.

But he made a video, like the one I made last fucking month, and he said he wants a stupid ice burial like Darryl. Vera will give a touching speech, Terrill will formally forgive him for that first bullet, and I...

I’m gonna miss the asshole. Like Darryl... and my family back home, if they’re even alive... and fucking  _ Ezra _ , fuck.

I don’t know how we’re going to make the ship work. It was taking forever with four of us, how long’s it going to take three? We’re bound to run out of something eventually.

_ Sherry stares at the camera for nearly a minute. Her lips twitch. _

We’re finally set for food, though.

* * *

[Entry: December 12, 2552]

... I dunno.... Finding Mike’s legs was gross and made me sort of hate Ezra, and paint everything he did in a bad light. But I just... it wasn’t even  _ fair _ . None of this has been, but... he was there, and then he  _ wasn’t _ . I thought that we could forget basic fucking gun safety just because whoever told me doesn’t care how I die. And now we’ll never even know who fired the bullet that came down, and we all kind of blame ourselves, and I wanted to think that Ezra kind of deserved it because it really  _ was  _ my fault, I suggested the whole stupid party.

Two years ago I thought it was the fucking  _ worst  _ to be stuck with only two other people to interact with for the rest of my life. Then I had five people, and now I have two people again, and it’s fucking  _ worse  _ than that.

... Fuck Charon, and fuck Freelancer, OK?

Vera’s cooking something from the garden. She thought I’d think it’s a bad idea... I guess I don’t  _ like  _ it. I mean it’s how I want to sort of honor Ezra, and remember meeting these fuckers, and that one year I could enjoy all their company. But I don’t want to...

_ She wipes at her eyes. Tears fall just after her hand clears her face. _

I don’t want them to be memories.

* * *

[Helmet feed: January 29, 2552]

Sherry sways, but Terrill stays fixed in the field of vision. His arms reach out to Sherry and hers reach to him, and Sherry counts out the beats while Terrill whistles a waltz. The helmet camera spins, and the blue figure with Vera’s callsign tag passes a couple times behind Terrill. Every time, the camera turns to keep Vera in view as long as possible, catching her crossed arms and thoughtful expression.

Terrill hums out a long fermata and the camera slows, focusing on Vera properly. Sherry and Terrill cast long shadows, but Vera is well-lit in the entryway to the Charon base, and the sun illuminates the chunk of metal that could be an abstract sculpture of a primitive rocket.

“See?” Terrill says. “It’s not that hard.”

Vera shakes her head. “I didn’t say it was hard,” she says, with a tone that suggests this is a cover-up, “you guys just look totally ridiculous doing it in armor.”

“Ridiculous? Or ridiculously sexy?” Terrill asks, letting go of Sherry to make a pose usually made by women in a more bikini style of armor.

“Like a sexy Widowmaker emote using a shitty Reinhardt skin.”

“You know, there are better ways to tell your girlfriend to undress,” Terrill points out.

Vera opens and immediately closes a private comm channel to Sherry, possibly making a mistake. Sherry’s head shakes. “We should get a bit more work done on the ship before we call it a day. I wanted to see if we have to hammer that side panel any more or if we need a whole new sheet.”

Terrill strolls to a dented metal sheet, half as tall as either of them and a couple times as wide. Sherry meets him there, puts her hand on one end while he puts his on the other. He nods, and together they lift it, walking sideways towards the art installation.

Another private channel opens from Vera. “Terrill seems to be doing a bit better today,” Vera says. She doesn’t sound as certain as her words.

Vera glances at Terrill. He’s still totally occupied with the lifting, and doesn’t seem to notice her glance.

“I think so,” Sherry says. “I’m still worried. I mean, for all of us.”

“Well, you can’t spend your whole life worrying about something that might not happen,” Vera points out. 

* * *

 

[Entry: March 10, 2552]

_ Sherry’s forehead is littered with strands of hair plastered in place with sweat, flushed in places from exertion but lacking the glow of adrenaline. She starts stripping her armor in her office, even as she addresses the camera in a hushed tone. _

Terrill keeps... leaving us. He gets all misty-eyed and he stops what he’s doing and he looks so sad. Hasn’t gotten out of bed a couple days. He was like this before the Freelancers, sometimes. Said he was thinking about... how he doesn’t want to be here anymore. That he’d rather die than eat another freeze-dried meal, or he’d keep drinking even if it killed him, and I  _ know  _ for some people it’s a kind of humor, but...

He used to tell me these things. Now he doesn’t. He just sits there and mopes and sneaks drinks like I fucking  _ care  _ what he does to his liver. So he probably  _ thinks  _ he has a problem, and that probably means he does.

... I emptied the armory. It’s all buried in the snow, next to Ezra’s memorial. If the fucker can face that, thaw the shit out, and go through with it...

I don’t know what else I can do.

* * *

[Entry: April 13, 2552]

Ship’s still coming along. We’ve given up on being able to send multiple people, it’s just going to take too long to get the fuel. Whoever leaves will have to come back. We’re still fighting over who goes. Vera thinks Terrill should go because she doesn’t want us to be separated, and Terrill thinks one of  _ us  _ should go. I think... he needs help. I don’t know if he’ll be able to get it fast enough if someone has to come back for him. But we don’t have parts for another comm array, so we won’t be able to talk to him, I’m not--

_ Sherry glances at her hand. Her eyes widen and she stands, shrieking, throwing a black speck onto the ground. She stomps repeatedly until the office door opens into and Vera is there, asking what’s wrong. _

Nothing, nothing, it’s fine--just a regular spider, probably from the garden--it’s gone now, it’s gone, I’ll be fine.

_ When the door closes, Sherry’s breath keeps picking up pace. She murmurs to herself as she leans in to turn on the camera. _

Fumigate the whole place anyway. Mike--

_ The file ends. _

* * *

[Entry: May 11, 2552]

The new seeds we planted aren’t coming up. Vera thinks maybe the soil needs new fertilizer. We’ve been  _ trying  _ manure, but... I mean, you probably only get out of that what you put in, and most of our calories come from dry-frozen preservatives and vodka.

Charon’s supply boxes keep getting smaller. Still the same weight, technically, but they keep filling it with munitions or alcohol or both. They want us... they want us to die. They’ve been wanting us to have an accident since they sent us here. And we fucking  _ did! _ The only problem Charon would have with Ezra dying is that more of us didn’t follow him. Fuck Charon. And fuck Freelancer while we’re at it!

We’re still working on the ship, but at some point the food is going to keep us from being able to work, and then what? Guess Vera’s gonna have to be the one who goes to space, because if Charon finds out Terrill isn’t here then we’re fucked!

* * *

[Entry: May 23, 2552]

Terrill fell, or--

_ The words bring Sherry to hyperventilation. Her face is already flushed and wet, and she makes a token effort to quiet her sobs, but it’s ineffective, as though her body has contained all the sobs it can hold and anything else just rolls off the mound on top. _

_ She goes on for several minutes, a couple of waves letting her gather herself so she can break out more tears, more sharp breaths, more shaky inhales ripping through a voice box in a search for new ways to distort her voice. When she is about to cry again, she closes her eyes and whispers. _

He might still pull through. He’s still breathing, he’s just... comatose, I think. The human body is supposed to withstand a lot.

_ Sherry’s eyes clench shut, brow furrowing as if to contain something, but instead it pushes more water out. _

He left a note.

* * *

[Entry: May 30, 2552]

_ Sherry reports from her office in a monotone. _

Terrill was very specific about what should be done to his body. Vera thinks we should go ahead and do it. She gave me a big long  _ spiel  _ about how it’s his last  _ request _ , and we should  _ honor  _ it, and I guess that’s true but... it’s stupid. It’s fucking stupid! The idiot killed himself so we could eat, like we wouldn’t have found a way, or just let hunger decides who dies instead of acting like any of us is better than the others. And I guess Terrill obviously had some other issues going on, but for  _ food  _ to be the tipping point? For him to just...  _ leave  _ me here, stick me with being the  _ only  _ one who knows this planet better than Vera? And to top it all off, he wants me to--fucking-- _ eat _ him, or whatever, like--like my empty stomach on  _ one day  _ is worth losing a friend like Terrill?

And Vera isn’t exactly happy, but she’s on board with it, and... I’m not sure I can handle  _ that  _ either! She’s such a  _ dumbass  _ sometimes. Terrill’s been swapping his biometric parts with hers and she didn’t even  _ think  _ to tell me? Never even  _ thought  _ it was suspicious, apparently. Even after the fucking  _ months  _ we spent worrying about rations when they stopped sending food for Darryl, she just couldn’t  _ fathom  _ something weird about that. And you know what? I bet they’ll find out somehow. They’ll stop sending food for two, and then I’ll have to split the  _ one  _ tiny ration box with Vera, and half of it’s going to be bullets, and if Terrill’s  _ brilliant  _ plan to fertilize the garden fails, then what? What the fuck’s going to happen? He’s just delayed the inevitable, but now Vera’s stupid D&D campaign doesn’t even have  _ two  _ characters, and working on the ship is going to be even  _ slower _ .

* * *

[Helmet feed: October 4, 2552]

Sherry’s helmet is stationary on a mess hall table. Half the time, the view is obscured by Sherry’s armored elbow, shifting in a cycle to bring food from the plate to her face. Vera sits across from her, eating the same food off of a similar plate. The only sounds are of food being cut, chewed, swallowed. Vera sneezes, and Sherry automatically says, “Gesundheit,” and Vera sneezes again and says, “Thanks.” Sherry coughs a couple times, once breaking into a short fit. Vera scratches her nose.

For five minutes, nothing profound happens. Then Vera rests her cutlery on the edge of her plate. Without looking up, in a voice full of hushed awe, she says, “We should get married.”

Sherry stills. Her elbow obstructs the camera, leaves Vera’s face as an unknown, until the sound of a chair scrapes on the floor and Sherry is standing, walking around the table, hovering next to Vera. And then Sherry is kissing Vera’s hand, and then her lips, leaning over so Vera doesn’t have to stand. Vera tilts her head up, puts a gloved hand on Sherry’s chest plate, kisses her back.

* * *

[Helmet Feed: November 9, 2552]

Sherry’s helmet is left on the table again. Sherry and Vera stand facing each other, holding hands. Sherry wears a full dress uniform, her hair loose but clean. Vera wears what used to be a white bed sheet, draped and fitted like a robe, a dress jacket draped over her shoulders, her hair braided into a crown with colorful strands of plastic and electrical wire woven in. They stand in front of the bulletin board in the dining hall, framed on either side by scraps of paper with sketches of faces on them, held up with red tacks.

“I promise,” Sherry says, “to save the shitty dessert for you every day, and to listen when you tell me which Star Wars movie is the best. To stay by your side always and love you no matter how hot someone else is. To let you into my home, wherever it is, whenever you need it, and to give you everything you need and want as long as it’s mine to give. In sickness and in health, in ice hell or on the sun, if you’re in my bed or on the other side of the fucking galaxy. I promise I love you until death do us part.”

“And I promise,” Vera says, voice tight, “to fix the toilet when it clogs. To honor and respect you, every day, if you’re here or not. In sickness and in health, on a frozen hell-planet or on the Para-Elemental Plane of Magma. I promise to shoot your foot every time, but only metaphorically when it means that we stay together forever. I promise to never again literally shoot you in the foot or anywhere. I love you and I always will, until we land on other sides of the Great Fuck You, and maybe after.”

Sherry ducks her head, shaking with laughter, face flushed enough to imply imminent tears. Vera laughs too, not bothering to hide it, and takes a hand from Sherry’s to wipe her own face, and then they’re kissing, silently.

There is no applause, but when Vera finally pulls back, Sherry gives a victorious yell, long enough for Vera to join it, and they applaud for each other, cheering and laughing, and then Vera starts the music. They each take down two of the portraits and dance with those first, and then with each other, and then they toast with highball glasses full of something poured over snow, throwing their voices in impressions of other people. Then they keep dancing for hours, sometimes with each other, sometimes not, always together.

* * *

[Entry: December 10, 2552]

_ Sherry leans back in her office chair. _

The  _ wife  _ and I had a joint memorial for Ezra and Darryl. The anniversaries are only a couple weeks apart, and there’s just so much work to do, you know? Just a moment of silence on the day of, so we could get back to it. Making the garden work, getting the metals out of the soil, fucking  _ getting  _ the soil in the first place. Keeping up the water supply, maintaining the solar panels so our suits don’t turn off in the middle of something... Remember when that happened to Darryl? Fucking sucked.

I think the ship’s pretty much done. We still could use some more fuel, but as long as it’s only one of us going, we can probably have enough within a couple months. Won’t be enough for a return trip, but frankly I don’t think the ship would survive it anyway. I mean, we’re calling it a ship, it’s really just a one-way rocket. Our only real hope is to get taken as an escape pod and brought back to civilization by someone else.

_ Sherry stops to cough, opens her mouth to say something else, catches her breath and coughs more. It’s a long, drawn-out fit, mouth covered by her sleeve-covered hand, and when she’s done, she stares at her hand and frowns. _

* * *

[Helmet feed: March 9, 2553]

Sparks fly from Vera’s welding torch while Sherry holds a metal sheet in place. The sound of it quickly turns into a static feedback.

Sherry flicks her hand, the blowtorch stops, and then Sherry doubles over, shaking the camera with her coughs. When she stops, Vera asks, “You doing okay? Need a break, or some water?”

“I’m good,” Sherry says. She puts her hands back in place to hold the metal. “I just hope it’s not contagious.”

“We’ve gotta be immune to each other by now,” Vera says, but there’s still worry in her voice.

Sherry shrugs. Vera starts the blowtorch up again.

There’s a long pause before Sherry says, “If I die--”

“You won’t die,” Vera says firmly, comm coming in clearly over the blowtorch. “We’ve done everything we can to prevent an explosion, and your suit will keep you safe if there’s an air breach.”

“But if I can’t find help--”

“You will. Nobody can say no to your face, and if you bring some video evidence or something--”

“Pretend it’s an alternate universe where it’s possible,” Sherry says. “Pretend I roll a natural one or whatever, every time, for everything. Or if I get bit by a spider or whatever, it doesn’t matter if it’s here or in space. Can you promise me something?”

Vera turns the blowtorch off again. She leans on the ship, and her helmet makes her expression irrelevant, but she faces Sherry directly. “Depends.”

“Promise me you’ll keep trying,” Sherry says. “Promise me you won’t... be like Terrill.” When Vera doesn’t respond, Sherry adds, “I don’t want to do this if failing means that you die.”

“I’ll die anyway without you. I mean I don’t really want to live without you,” Vera tries to explain, “but here... I physically can’t. I won’t be able to make a new ship on my own, and Charon will stop sending anything at all. I’ll starve, or freeze, or get bitten or whatever. I don’t know about falling, but--”

“What if someone comes for the SOS beacon two days later?” Sherry asks.

Vera shakes her head. “We’ve had it for years and nobody’s noticed it. There’s no way.”

“Is that...” Sherry inhales deeply, steeling herself. “Is that how you’d honor me? Giving up? Letting there be a chance that nobody ever finds out about what they did to us?”

“It’s not about you, though. You’d be...” Vera’s voice tightens around a word, saying it too quietly to be intelligible.

“I know it’s hard to think about,” Sherry says, “but Vera, my love, I can’t leave you to die alone.” She reaches out a gloved hand and touches the armor plating of Vera’s arm. “Maybe you should be the one to go. I can live here, I have before--”

“You shouldn’t have to, though,” Vera insists. “You’ve been cold and tired too long already, and I won’t let my wife put herself through that again but alone this time. And besides, you’re not the one who gave up your legal identity for your dead-end job. And you’ve actually got flight experience. You’ll be able to actually get there and get someone back to help me, and Terrill should help the garden keep going for at least a couple more weeks. Without the ship to save for, I can put our fraud money to buying emergency rations. I can be fine”

Sherry sighs. “How long will you wait, then?”

It takes a while for Vera to even shrug. “Two months?”

“I won’t leave unless you promise me it’ll be six.”

“How the hell will you take six months and still come back?” Vera demands.

“Promise me, or I’ll stay here and die with you.”

Vera’s soft gasp hisses through the comm. Her head tilts down. “This is payback for when I shot you in the foot, isn’t it?”

“It’s only metaphorical, sweetheart.”

Vera drops the blowtorch to embrace Sherry, who hugs back.

“I should have just made more D&D metaphors,” Vera murmurs.

* * *

[Entry: April 13, 2553]

_ Sherry’s face is gaunt. She wraps herself in a blanket in her office. _

Vera’s still in denial. And I guess she has a point. I don’t exactly have a doctor telling me that I have two weeks left to live. Maybe this is just how it feels to have two cancerous cells in your body. I wouldn’t really know. I mean, the skin thing didn’t really hurt, but I don’t know if it actually was. I don’t know if  _ this _ actually is.

_ She coughs. _

I keep getting too dizzy to work. The power suit doesn’t really help anymore. Maybe I’ve lost too much muscle mass to use it right. And if  _ that’s  _ not a sign of something wrong then I don’t know what is.

Whenever I have to break, I’ve been going through my old logs and helmet cams. Putting together something for Vera, I guess. I wanted to tell her that I still love her. That there’s still something to live for, that if nothing else everyone in the Great Fuck You wants her to live so at least we can get some justice or whatever.

... It’s probably a downer. Everything is here. The only things that aren’t are usually just me raving about Vera, or about someone who’s dead anyway.

 

* * *

 

[Helmet feed: May 12, 2553] 

Sherry’s helmet sits on a flat surface, facing Sherry in her bed. She does not move. The time stamp advances, minute by minute, but the footage may as well be an image.

The door opens. Vera enters in full armor, wraps Sherry in a white sheet, and carries her out gingerly, as if afraid to wake her.

The empty helmet stares at an empty bed for an hour.

Vera returns and sits on the bed with two standard rifles and a knife. She takes off her helmet and carves something into the stock of one rifle. When she's satisfied, she reaches for the other as if afraid of it, draws out each motion as she scrapes more letters. She stops halfway through, wiping her eyes, and she stops ten minutes before finishing, weeping openly.

She doesn't stop to admire her work on the second rifle. Vera picks up her helmet, scoops up the other rifle, and leaves for two hours.

The door slams open. A rifle is thrown onto the bed, landing such that the etching on the stock of the rifle is legible.  _ Vera - Fuck Freelancer. _

After fifteen minutes of loud shuffling, punctuated with curses and metallic clathters, Vera picks up the helmet, turning it to face her. She now wears a suit of armor that confuses the camera’s identity tags, a mix of dark and light gray plates consistent only in the placement of red accents. She stares at the helmet for a long moment before closing her eyes. “Guess I promised,” she whispers, with a hint of regret, and she puts the helmet on.

Her hands, plated in two shades of gray, grab the rifle. Vera paces through the base, picking up a duffel bag, filling it with food and liquor from the pantry, checking the airtight seals as she goes. She picks up four clumsily-sketched portraits from a table near the bulletin board in the mess hall and sighs heavily as she shoves them into the bag. “Dumbass,” she mutters.

Vera stops at Sherry's office, opens the logs, and records an entry.

“If you're here to answer our SOS, you’re too late,” Vera explains, like it’s rehearsed. “Everyone is dead except me, and I’ve changed my mind. I’ll let fate decide. The rocket will probably explode, or crash me back down, but--that’s what Sherry wanted, isn’t it?” She sounds desperate to know the answer.

“If I survive, everything I do will be to end Project Freelancer and Charon Industries. Whatever weapons were used, they’re the ones who murdered us, and they’re the ones who’ll pay. In memory of Ezra, Mike, Sherry, Terrill, and Darryl, fuck Project Freelancer and fuck Charon Industries. This is...”

Vera shakes her head. “This has been Vera. Formerly Agent Ohio, formerly Vera Jane MacDonaldson. Signing off.”

She saves the file as  _ read me _ and leaves it in Sherry’s folder.

On the way out of the base, Vera takes two canisters of ammo from a thawing block of ice on the entryway-turned-garage. She approaches the three-story-high rocket, its handmade nature becoming more apparent as she approaches: riveted together along lines that might have followed a child's drawing, curves hammered into metal sheets of subtly different shades. Vera stands under an exhaust port and the camera switches to night vision in time to see her hands grasping ladder runs, climbing unsteadily, weight shifting as the duffel swings from her shoulder.

She opens the hatch to the cockpit, and the camera readjusts to the daylight. Vera sets the bag on the closed hatch and takes a couple tries to swing herself into the upward-facing seat. She straps in, hooks two lines to her armor, sees the vacuum settings announce themselves on her HUD.

Her two-tone hands touch half a dozen switches and buttons, fiddling with every control in the cockpit, whispering shorthand instructions to herself. The rocket fills with a hum, and Vera pulls two loose wires closer as she leans back and connects them.

The rocket ignites with a bang. Vera gasps, head forced back into the seat, the rise slow for a moment and then picking up pace.

For one minute, everything is rattling punctuated by the creak of metal, wisps of clouds beginning to approach. Several components of the console fall off, and Vera flinches her hands over her face, gasping and feeling along her visor for cracks. She holds her breath after a small sigh.

Two minutes after take-off, a piece of metal plating shakes loose of the bolts keeping it attached to the glass window, but the thinning atmosphere does not push it entirely clear of the rest of the frame. Glass shatters somewhere behind Vera and she shrieks, hyperventilates, covers her face...

But after another minute, she is still alive. Her biomonitor shows high heart rate and respiration, but nothing medically worrisome. An indicator on her HUD shows that her suit is naked to the vacuum but perfectly sealed, with three hours of oxygen at current consumption rate, and as Vera calms and her breath steadies, the timer extends.

“... I made it,” Vera says. She blows a breath out and nods. “I made it? Sherry!” she screams, “I made it! I got off, I'm free!”

She reaches for the comm console, hooks it up to her suit’s speaker, and murmurs keywords under her breath before opening the channel. “SOS, I repeat, SOS, broadcasting on all frequencies. Escape vessel in need of immediate rescue after slipspace malfunction. Please respond, over.”

The first time, Vera says it calmly. By the eighth time, there is a hint of panic, and by the twentieth she is exhausted, her voice beginning to tire. She whispers, off the comm, “Fuck, could have brought something to repeat it for me.”

But within two hours, there is a gravelly voice on the comm. “Escape vessel, this is leisure vessel  _ Happiness Is _ , we’re not particularly sizeable but we can probably tow you somewhere. Please give us your coordinates so we can do that, over.”

Vera cheers and answers. “Coordinates unknown due to slipspace malfunction,” she says eagerly, “please locate proximity beacon. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

* * *

[Entry: August 25, 2555]

_ Vera records from the cockpit of a Pelican wearing the mixed gray suit with the helmet off, the absolute void of slipspace behind her. _

I’ve been watching Sherry’s videos again. I still miss her. You know, she actually used to tease the hell out of me for not keeping my own logs. Guess I figured it was time to listen to her. Better late than never, I guess.

... Freelancer was already taken down, apparently. David saw to that. Good for him, I guess. Sounds like they put  _ him _ through the wringer, too. I mean, a different one, but I guess it makes me glad they didn't put us through  _ that  _ bullshit first. Would have been too much to go through that and get dumped anyway. But I guess they're gone now, and that's the best I can do for Ezra and Mike.

So now it's just me against Charon. The journalists I’ve approached with my story weren’t interested. Some of them said I was  _ lying _ , which pisses me off.

But none of this is technically their fault. It’s Charon’s.

I have Sherry’s credentials. She didn’t have access to a lot of their files, and their records have her as missing so I think she has even less than she’d have otherwise. But I got far enough that I could steal someone  _ else’s  _ credentials, and I’ve been digging up whatever dirt I can. Those journalists might not care about three security officer with shitty orders, but they’ll  _ probably  _ care about the shady-ass funding these guys are getting, and I’m not really sure what’s going on on this Chorus place, but I know it’s something. The files mention a civil war, and they’ve hired some mercenaries to... I guess make sure a certain side wins. But it’s not very clear on which side that is, and nobody’s going to believe me if I say they hired mercenaries for  _ both _ sides, so I guess I’ll have to check it out.

I’m all loaded up, got this ship full of weapons, food, and medical supplies. Should get me somewhere in a civil war, don’t you think? The guy who sold it said seemed to think it’s overkill, but it’ll be handy if I can trade things. I want to keep my distance for a while, since I don’t really know which side is doing what, but I might need to get in someone’s favor.

I’m going to figure out what’s going on, and then I’m heading straight back out. I’ll make those journalists pay attention to Charon if I have to bring them to Chorus myself.

... This didn’t take as much of the trip as I was hoping, but whatever.

* * *

[Helmet feed: July 14, 2553]

Vera carries a sniper rifle in hands with different colors as she follows a man in tan armor with black accents. They jog together along a cliff side, and Vera glances behind her to see half a dozen others following closely in the same armor, different colors of stripes on each tan uniform, each carrying a different weapon.

A mirage seems to form at the cliff’s edge, in the general shape of a small spaceship. As the man in front touches it, the ship materializes, active camouflage disengaging dramatically against the setting sun. He turns to address the group as they gather in a semi-circle around the ship’s entrance.

“Any sign we were followed?” he asks.

“No, sir,” a woman with blue accents says. “Nothing on motion tracker or thermals, and Hendrix hasn’t reported anything from the sensors at base.”

“Good,” the man says. He turns to Vera. “Are you sure you won’t join us? I’m sure that the UNSC will want to hear your argument against Charon.”

Vera shakes her head. “I’ll give them my report when I leave with the Feds. They deserve to know.”

Someone coughs awkwardly. The man sounds doubtful as he says, “Suit yourself. I’ve put in a word with the armorer at Kimball’s base to give you a ship, if you change your mind. Least I can do for you helping us roost out these mercs.”

“Just get going or you won’t get reinforcements before they find out we know,” Vera says, urgent.

The man in black accents nods and turns to the ship. The woman in blue and a man in green follow him through the bay doors, and the ship takes off.

Vera turns to the remaining soldiers. “Start heading back down,” she says. “I’ll cover from above with Garrison.” And she watches three men begin descending the cliff, and she glances up at the departing ship.

And then Garrison staggers, a knife embedded in his spine, and falls off the cliff. Vera begins to turn, but she’s knocked to the ground and her visor cracks, cutting the HUD overlay from the helmet camera. Vera gasps gutterally, one hand approaching her face, and looks up just in time to see a dark gray figure, stark against the yellow sunset, standing where Garrison stood a moment ago, firing what could be a flare gun at the departing ship.

The ship explodes into fire as the gray man turns back, orange streak facing Vera. She groans and reaches for her sniper rifle, but a dark glove with orange stripes takes it and its owner crouches next to her, peering down the scope and firing four times down the side of the cliff.

Then he turns to Vera. “Now, there’s got to be a story here,” he says slowly, turning her onto her back and pressing something under her chin, forcing her to tilt her head. “I haven’t seen you around here. You want to tell me how you got to this planet and why you tried to turn my second best clients against me?”

“No,” Vera hisses.

The man pulls a sidearm with his other hand and shoots Vera somewhere below the breastplate. She grunts loudly.

“Too tough for that, huh?” The man leans close, filling the camera with gray angles and a brilliant stripe. “You’ve got an option, now. You can either die silent, or you can do one last thing with your life. I’m going to find everyone involved in this little attempt either way, you can just help me get it over with, maybe spare a couple of bystanders the trouble of torturing them. What’ll it be?”

Vera whimpers. Her assailant asks, “You can still talk, can’t you? I bet you can at least scream. Just give me a hand, will you?”

Shaking her head gently, Vera says, “Fuck Charon.”

The man slams the butt of a pistol through her visor. She rolls her head on her neck and her helmet rolls off, facing away from her.

“One more time,” the man says, hot with impatience. “Tell me where you’re from and where you got that armor. You can make this easy, or you can make me get creative.”

“Fuck you.” Vera makes the words sound painful, hissing through the consonants. The sound of spitting doesn’t seem as difficult.

The sidearm fires again as the man makes another loud, frustrated sound. Vera’s helmet goes flying, spinning in the air until it lands. It records the gray man kicking Vera’s torso, Vera justling limply, the man kicking again with a frustrated yell.

And then he walks toward the helmet, wiping his visor and speaking into a channel.ing into a channel.

“Locus,” he says, controlled, staring at the helmet as he picks it up, “I found the President trying to leave for help.”

The answer is quiet, barely picked up by the helmet’s microphone. “Then stop him.”

“Yeah, I’m not stupid,” the man says defensively, standing and approaching the cliff’s edge. “His ship’s in pieces, I’m on my way to check for survivors now. Someone talked him into it, though, someone with too much information. I’m pushing up our next rendezvous so we can look at this helmet, see if there’s anything files that’ll let us figure out where she came from.”

“Not one of the farmers you recruited?”

“She’s not wearing any armor issued by the Republic,” the man says, turning the helmet in his hands, pointing it to the ground, the sky, the distance beyond him. “Looks a bit like some of our men, I'm thinking maybe she’s got the same supplier or maybe we’re gonna have to start screening our cannon fodder.” He mumbles to himself. “This thing still recording? Let’s see--”

The file ends.


End file.
